Why I am not a moderate Muslim
Article Source: The Radical Middle Way
Last month, three Muslim men were arrested in Britain in connection with the London bombings of July 2005. In light of such situations, a number of non-Muslims and Muslims alike yearn for “moderate,” peace-loving Muslims to speak out against the violent acts sometimes perpetrated in the name of Islam. And to avoid association with terrorism, some Muslims adopt a “moderate” label to describe themselves.
I am a Muslim who embraces peace. But, if we must attach stereotypical tags, I’d rather be considered “orthodox” than “moderate.”
“Moderate” implies that Muslims who are more orthodox are somehow backward and violent. And in our current cultural climate, progress and peace are restricted to “moderate” Muslims. To be a “moderate” Muslim is to be a “good,” malleable Muslim in the eyes of Western society.
I recently attended a debate about Western liberalism and Islam at the University of Cambridge where I’m pursuing my master’s degree. I expected debaters on one side to present a bigoted laundry list of complaints against Islam and its alleged incompatibility with liberalism, and they did. Read more »
American Terrorism
Dr. Aafia Siddiqui - just 1 example of American Terrorism
ISI? Terrorist?
I know my comments on this are a little late… but it has happened.
The preparation to include Pakistan in the axis of evil has begun already. Reports that Pakistan’s ISI has strong links with Taliban is out, with substantial “intelligence” from the CIA. Also, it has been implicated that the blasts outside the Indian embassy last month had ISI involvement.
In our day, the media has become such a powerful tool, especially in the hands of the most powerful country in the world, it has become the strongest brain washing instrument ever created. All America has to do is publish a story, based on lies… totally… and the world will go around believing it.
But before I elaborate on those comments, lets just analyze, that IF ISI does have links with the Taliban still, why would that be? Now there’s a difficult question. WHY would Pakistan have ANY interest what so ever in the Taliban? Especially, since America has so much against them. Hmm… I guess the fact that the Taliban who were in power before 9/11 were all Pakistan educated afghan refugees from the soviet-afghan war time does not really matter. Or the fact that when Afghanistan fell into civil war after the soviets were driven out and Pakistan supported the Taliban to come into power and drive out the warring warlords doesn’t matter either. Or the fact that the Taliban government later was practically run by the ISI is not of much value. And also that the current government in Afghanistan is very pro India, Pakistan’s greatest enemy, which places rivals on either side of Pakistan’s borders is also not a very strong argument. And lastly, Taliban were CREATED by Pakistan, with American money and training… I guess that shouldn’t matter either.
Whose interests does America expect Pakistan to protect? Their own or America’s? Pakistan realizes now that siding with the US in the so called war against terror was not a very smart decision after all, because in doing so, Pakistan has managed to bring the war right inside their homes. Every time a Pakistani citizen returns home alive, it is an achievement. A blessing. A blessing not to have been blown up by a suicide bomber while dining at a restaurant, or while grocery shopping, or while coming back from work.
The US does not see Pakistan as a major economic power in the future. The country is riddled with corruption, ignorance and lawlessness. People, in general, are totally apathetic to what happens now. It’s like a jungle out there now. Survival of the fittest. It doesn’t matter anymore that it’s OUR jungle, and we have to take care of it… it’s MY jungle now… “I” have to survive, even if that means killing every other animal in the jungle.
If Pakistan continues on the way it has been since the past 7 years, the Mushy way, the predictions of the 1947 Indian and British politicians will soon come true. The country will cease to exist… it WILL fall. Collapse internally. Or bombed out of existence. Based on American propaganda against it. Which has started already. Allegations against the ISI are just a beginning.
“Saddam has weapons of mass destruction!” we all remember that, don’t we? And once it was all done, and hundreds of thousands of people killed, they just looked up and said; “Oh we made a mistake!”
That’s how simple it is. A country that bombed another country to dust based on false intelligence, or should I say, based on a MISTAKE, is accusing us today of having ties to their enemies. How do you know that THAT is not a mistake?
The cruelty of Guantanamo
By Adel Safty, Special to Gulf News
Published: July 27, 2008, 23:49Last month the Bush administration suffered two legal defeats regarding its shameful policy of denying due process to detainees held at Guantanamo Bay.
The United States Supreme Court ruled that the Guantanamo detainees had a constitutional right to petition a federal court to challenge the basis of their continued detention.
In another rebuff to the Bush administration’s disregard for due process, a federal appeals court ruled that Guantanamo detainee Huzaifa Parhat, who has been detained for six years without knowing the charges against him, was improperly labelled an “enemy combatant.”
These court rulings, and several other previous rulings, clearly reject the Bush administration’s violations of the human and constitutional rights of the Guantanamo detainees. The New York Times editors noted that the latest ruling “is a victory for the rights of detainees – and a rebuke to the lawless policies of the Bush administration”. (June 25, 2008 )
Nevertheless, the Bush administration shows no sign of fundamentally abandoning its discredited Guantanamo policies. Bush asked Congress for a plan to allow the Guantanamo prisoners to challenge the basis of their incarceration in federal courts but without ever setting foot in the United States because of the “extraordinary risk” they allegedly pose.
Bush also asked Congress to reaffirm in the same plan that the United States “remains engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaida”. A similar affirmation following 9/11 was used by the Bush administration to justify its violations of the human and constitutional rights of detainees in American camps abroad and its war on civil liberties at home.
In the belligerent mindset of the Bush administration the so-called war on terror justified the horrors of Abu Ghraib, the extraordinary renditions, the CIA secret prisons, the countless violations of international law, and the cruelty of Guantanamo.
‘Worst of the worst’
The Bush administration called the Guantanamo detainees “the worst of the worst”. A report on Guantanamo detainees prepared by Seton Hall University School of Law concluded that 55 per cent of the detainees had not been determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States. Only 8 per cent of the detainees are alleged to be Al Qaida fighters.
The report also found that 60 per cent of the Guantanamo suspects had been detained simply because they were “associated with” groups the Bush administration considered terrorist organisations.
Moreover, an eight-month McClatchy newspapers investigation in 11 countries on three continents, published last month, established that dozens of men, perhaps hundreds, had wrongfully been imprisoned in Afghanistan, Guantanamo and elsewhere by US forces on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, or bounty payments.
McClatchy newspapers reporters interviewed 66 released detainees, more than a dozen Afghan officials – and US officials with intimate knowledge of the detention programme. The investigation also reviewed thousands of pages of US military tribunal documents.
“The investigation also found,” a report of the investigation stated, “that despite the uncertainty about whom they were holding, US soldiers beat and abused many prisoners”.
One of these detainees is 21-year old Egyptian Canadian Omar Khadr who was arrested by American forces when he was 15 years old. Khadr was injured and arrested during an American raid on a compound in Afghanistan and accused of throwing a grenade that killed an American medical officer.
Khadr complained to Canadian intelligence agents who visited him in 2003 that he had been tortured in Afghanistan by American personnel before being sent to Guantanamo where he suffered abuse and cruelty.
Successive Canadian governments ignored his pleas for help and repatriation to Canada. Former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin now says that if his government knew what is now known he would have repatriated Khadr to Canada. Current Prime Minister Stephen Harper refuses to intervene.
Earlier this month the Supreme Court of Canada ordered the government to release secret documents about the Khadr case. The documents indicate that Khadr had been abused by his interrogators and that he suffered sleep deprivation.
Khadr was classified as an enemy combatant. The UN considers any person under the age of 18 who is part of regular or irregular armed forces as a child soldier-generally viewed by the international community as a victim in need of rehabilitation.
Enough suffering
In a court brief to the military commission set to try Khadr in October, Professor Sarah Paoletti of the University of Pennsylvania School of Law stated: “To date, there is no precedent in history for the prosecution of a child soldier before an international criminal tribunal.”
At the Special Court for Sierra Leone in 2004, the US prosecutor, David Crane, was given the option of putting on trial those aged 15 to 17 who committed war crimes. Crane famously rejected the idea. “The children of Sierra Leone have suffered enough both as victims and perpetrators,” he said, “I want to prosecute the people who forced thousands of children to commit unspeakable crimes.”
Khadr’s human and constitutional rights have been violated, in particular his right not to be prosecuted for ex post facto crimes-offences that were not crimes at the time they were committed. The charges against Khadr include conspiracy to aid Al Qaida, and murder by an “unprivileged belligerent”.
But these charges were not offences in 2002 when Khadr was arrested. They became offences only in 2006 when Congress passed the Military Commission Act. A defendant cannot be tried on the basis of retroactive application of the law. Khadr could not be expected to comply with a law that had not yet existed.
Regrettably, the kangaroo courts of Guantanamo are nonetheless going ahead with the trial of Omar Khadr, a child soldier and a prisoner of war, abandoned by his government and denied due process by his captors. One of the many stories of cruelty of the Guantanamo prison
